Dr. Antonin Reiter one of the directors of The South Moravian Museum in Znojmo (Czech Republic) contacted me to inform Dr. manouchehr M. Khorasani on May 16, 2019 that my last book “Heirloom of Steel” had won the prestigious museum prize Gloria Musaealis 2018.

DR. Khorasani wrote the book as the main author and editor and my other colleagues who contributed to some chapters were Mr. Marco Briccola, Mr. Rainer Daehnhardt, Mr. Petr Eckl, Ms. Vanna Scolari Ghiringhelli and Dr. Bohumil Planka. On May 16, 2019 Dr Khorasani flew to Prague early in the morning to take part in the important event of Gloria Musaealis.

Title of the book: Heirloom of Steel: The Collection of Oriental and Asian Arms and Armor in Znojmo Museum (The Czech Republic)

From left to right: Dr. Bohumil Planca (Nihonto expert and member of the Czech-Japanese Cultural Center), Dr. Manouchehr M. Khorasani, Ms. Vladimíra Durajková (General Director of the South Moravian Museum in Znojmo) and Dr Antonin Reiter (Director of South Moravian Museum in Znojmo).

Each year all museums in the Czech Republic take part in this important competition. The prizes are given to museums in three categories:

Best exhibitions

Best publications

Best innovations for museums and museum studies

The book “Heirloom of Steel” won in the category of best publications. 43 books were shortlisted in the final competition. In the second step only four books won the museum prize for the best publication. I am really proud to say that “Heirloom of Steel” was among these four books.

The 4 books which won the museum prize among 43 short-listed books are as follows:

Left side: Museum Romani Culture; “Amendar: An Insight in the World of the Romani Personalities“; Right side: Museum of the City Brno; “A New Building Brno 1928“.

Left Side: South Moravian Museum Znojmo; “Heirloom of Steel”; Right side: Museum Cheb; “Flora Soosu and the Surroundings“.

To see a video about the event see below …

The event took place in the picturesque building of Wenceslas Square, where the National Museum is located.

The entire event was accompanied by professional songs and two professional moderators who moderated the whole event. I would like to thank all my colleagues there and also all Czech people. This is a special price as the book “Heirloom of Steel” was the only book which was not directly connected to the Czech cultural heritage and goods but dealt with oriental and Asian arms and armor kept in a Czech museum. The textbook “Heirloom of Steel” has already demonstrated that it is a seminal addition to the domain of military studies.

A human skeleton, which dates from some 5,500 years ago, was put on show at the museum of archaeology in the city of Neyshabur, northeast Iran in mid-November of 2018.

A team of archaeologist discovered the skeleton in 2004 while surveying a trench in Tapeh Borj, an archaeological site, near Neyshabur, IRNA reported.

The human skeleton dated to c. 5,500 years ago, on display at the Museum of Archaeology in the city of Neyshabur in mid-November, 2018 (Source: Tehran Times & IRNA).

Tapeh Borj has yielded remains and artifacts dated from the 4th millennium BC to the Parthian era (247 BC-224 CE), the report added.

Neyshabur, situated 74 km west of Mashhad, has shifted its position repeatedly in historical times. American excavations in 1934-40 disclosed rich remains of both the Seljuq and pre-Seljuq periods in the locality.

The Iranian Kandys cape and its legacy in Europe (click to enlarge). (A) Medo-Persian nobleman from Persepolis wearing the Iranian Kandys cape of the nobility 2500 years past (B) figure of Paul dressed in North Iranian/Germanic dress from a 5th century ivory plaque depicting the life of Saint-Paul (C) reconstruction by Daniel Peterson (The Roman Legions, published by Windrow & Greene in 1992, p.84) of a 4th-5th century Germanic warrior wearing Iranian style dress and the Kandys. The Iranian Persepolis styles of arts and architecture continued to exert a profound influence far beyond its borders for centuries after its destruction by Alexander (Pictures used in Kaveh Farrokh’s lectures at the University of British Columbia’s Continuing Studies Division and Stanford University’s WAIS 2006 Critical World Problems Conference Presentations on July 30-31, 2006).

It is however almost impossible to say with any certainty what is a common Indo-European element from the Early Bronze Age and what was a borrowing or influence and who truly influenced whom; whence a mythologem originated is very tricky to acsertain. Before the Sarmatians and Alans to become the common mobile element linking together people as different as the Brythonic Celts and Romano-Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Goths, Vandlas, Lombards, even Huns, Avars, Proto-Bulgars, Proto-Magyars, and Slavs, long before the Germanic and Slavic migrations of the Voelkerwanderungszeit, there were the Celts moving all over Europe and meeting in the East with the Dacians, the Getae, the Thracians, and the Scythians (the Dacian-Thracian being Indo-Europeans heavily influenced by the Iranian Scythians). So, who took from whom, where and when and especially why and how are a set of question still unsolved.

Scythians on the steppes of the ancient Ukraine. Scholars are virtually unanimous that the Scythians were an Iranian people related to the Medes and Persians of ancient Iran or Persia (Painting by Angus McBride). A branch of the Iranian-speaking Scythians were to arrive in the northwest regions of the Indian subcontinent, to be then known as the “Sikh” (from Iranian Saka=Scythian).

Note also the following connections:

Ire=Ireland (Old Gaelic/Erse)

Airyanam Vaeja, Airyanam Kshatram=iryanam=Eran=Iran

Wonderful! There was also an Irish mythical King called Eremon (Vedic Aryaman?)

About Dr. Kaveh Farrokh

Dr. Kaveh Farrokh is dedicated to the Advancement of Ancient Iranian and Classical Studies. The relationship between ancient Iran and the civilizations of the Greco-Roman world (and its European successors), India, China and the Far East, and the Arabo-Islamic world are a major focus of this website. Civilizations are rarely conceived in a vacuum and are often the result of the synthesis of a number of elements, examples being the Roman Empire, ancient Iran and India.